First Reviews for Geffen
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| Photo: Damien Maloney for The New York Times |
Today the Los Angeles Times (Sam Lubell) and New York Times (Robin Pogrebin) review the David Geffen Galleries. Both reviews are positive, and both contain numerous photos. Even feisty Peter Zumthor is on-message: "I have realized my vision," he told the NYT.
Don't miss photos of art hanging on ultramarine blue and burgundy-black tinted concrete; Reiko Sudo's metallic-sheer curtains; new sculptural commissions by Pedro Reyes and Do Ho Suh; the Koons Split-Rocker in bloom and the reinstalled Calder with the water turned on.
At top, a black-cube gallery for Light and Space art by John McCracken, Fred Eversley, and Craig Kauffman.
Comments
I can gift the NYT review, here, below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/arts/design/lacma-museum-geffen-galleries.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZVA.iuPA.08rvylHT9GCm&smid=url-share
With its solid gray concrete walls, interior galleries in earthy tones of red and blue and etchings in the plaza paving, the building is designed to feel both ancient and new. “We wanted people to see that this is handmade not by God, but by human beings,” Zumthor said.
Note: The LA Times does not allow gift links to articles. One of the many ways it is NOT the NYT. If you think it is worth it, there are $1 subscriptions for 4 months.
--- J. Garcin
https://www.latimes.com/0000019d-6980-dbcd-a5ff-f9aab6970000-123
The architect Bernard Tschumi contributed this idea to the discussion:
He mentioned that a friend of his once said that a museum should never have a spine, but that it might be like a sponge. "What's interesting about this analogy of the sponge," he thought aloud, "is that it suggests the autonomy and specificity of each of its cells [i.e., galleries], and also an endless combination of linkages and configurations.... A sponge is a seamless whole of sorts that preserves the possibility of heterogeneity."
--- J. Garcin
> and different from the
> mindset of museums
> that are ordered, measured,
> and steadfast.
Not sure how that in the long run will play out. In a way, however, it may be the best option for a museum without the large, mature collections of a Louvre or Met.
One hint of that LACMA's George de la Tour painting. It appears to be displayed more in isolation, more like that of a Mona Lisa in the Louvre. The de la Tour is fine and all, but if LACMA's objects in general are shown in a way suggestive of more space than artworks, that will be the opposite extreme of a Paris museum. Or where a place that seems crammed with more stuff than necessary.
After all, a little can go a long way. Some of the works in the Egyptian galleries of the Met, as another example, after a bit of wandering around, can look and feel like the opposite extreme of, "where's the rest of the collection?"
And it appears the Geffen will have contemporary and modern mixed in with older works. So the square footage already dedicated to that style and period in BCAM and often too many temporary shows in the Resnick too will spill over into the new building. If Michael Govan is too much into places like a Broad or MOCA (or Dia Foundation), LACMA will continue its unfortunate path of "a de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly...not a very good one."
LA Times:
Not only was the sculpture, fondly referred to as "Hello Girls," one of the museum's earliest prized attractions, Calder also designed a poster commemorating the museum's opening..."The concept of museums commissioning artists is now commonplace. It wasn't commonplace then," said LACMA's...Stephanie Barron...as she watched the fountain's bright yellow, red and blue mobile-like paddles...alongside Sandy Rower, Calder's grandson and head of his foundation.
That's why discussions about where "Hello Girls" would land began very early in the process of designing the new building, said Rower, adding that he even addressed the matter with architect Peter Zumthor.
"Kids coming over here are gonna love it," Rower said. "So are people that have been obsessing on modern art and modernism all their lives — they're gonna be confounded by it."
Barron said getting the placement of the sculpture just right was of utmost importance to the museum and the Calder Foundation.... In the 1980s it was stranded on a hillside in the sculpture garden and later sent for display at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design.
The ability to observe the piece from a 360-degree vantage point allows viewers to see the "balletic nature of the wind and the water," said Barron, adding that she has enjoyed watching people's reactions to the installation as it's gone up. "People who haven't been here for a long time say, 'Oh my God, it's back. It's my favorite piece. It looks so much better. It looks different.' And people who've never seen it say, 'Oh, wow. This just makes me happy.'"
Rower nodded, smiling as the wind pushed a large blue paddle counterclockwise.
"I think your grandfather probably would be really happy with that," Barron said.
The photo in the LA Times article comes with a photo that shows the Diego Rivera painting on a wall all by itself. As with the de la Tour, LACMA apparently has more space (both wall and floor) than artworks to fill it with.
Whether that's sarcasm or hard reality, it's the flip side of a Louvre or Met. Or where a visitor is overwhelmed by the number of objects on display. Perhaps LACMA is shooting for the MOCA effect. Or the feeling of, "is that all there is?!"
But the old-time museum paradigm can be off-putting too. The Louvre format is the extreme of too much, too much. And the Beaux-Arts look and format of American museums built in the early 1900s can be too much like another worn-out cliche (versus the one of gaunt, spartan and hipster-trendy), another version of being in a room where someone is wearing way too much perfume.
The one thing, however, I'm sure about is the Pereira/Hardy-Holzman-Pfeiffer campus was one of the weakest settings of any museum in the US.
I was under the presumption that this came part and parcel with being an encyclopedic museum.
NYT: "Thank you for your attention to LACMA. LACMA is certainly "audacious" if you think of it as a classic 20's "self-centered, elitist type." Certainly a reflection of today's LA. NYT giving it the usual rubber stamp, mostly uncritical coverage, seems so 2026. Very little to the original LACMA. No mention of Kricke's timely and meaningful sculpture that opened the first LACMA in 1965.
At least Urban Lights can be justified on the basis of the fact that LACMA was once a history museum. But art? Not so much. Koons' gigantic garden clearly constitutes "selfie and click bait." At least Calder's piece was allowed to live on in LA.
I suggested to LACMA long ago that they at least give some homage and attention to the LACMA opening in 1965 by bringing back the original 1965 entry sculpture by Kricke called "Space Sculpture." Not a chance, apparently. No respect for the years most of us totally fell in love with LACMA's first installment. Sold to Daimler-Benz in the late 80's.
I am fortunate to own what I would call the very best photograph of Kirke's glamorous (imagine that) and meaningful piece. It was shot in 1966, on a clear early summer night. My Otis Art Institute friend and I did a lot of street photography in the urban areas between MacArthur Park (yes, that MacArthur Park) and La Cienega Park.
If you wish, fill in the NYT gap by searching "kricke lacma sculpture." You will find more than just my photograph. I wish I could do more.
An LA Times writer around the time the museum was being modified for the Anderson building dismissed Kricke's work as a "powder puff." Things like that and Pereira's missteps (etc) made me unconsciously disregard the actual amount of legitimate planning that went into the 1965 building.
LA Times, April 2015:
Erected as a dramatic plaza centerpiece when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art first opened on Wilshire Boulevard 50 years ago, “Space Sculpture” stumbled through a less-than-splendid existence.
It began life as an explosive tower of welded stainless steel rods, stacked up on a pedestal standing in a fountain. In 1967, two years after it went up, a museum conservator told The Times that the stainless steel was beginning to corrode under the biting onslaught of L.A.’s then-notorious smog.
The work was temporarily removed to make way for construction of the hulking Anderson Building for Modern Art... At the behest of LACMA Director Richard Fargo Brown, wealthy electronics industrialist David E. Bright donated the money for “Space Sculpture.” Bright was so enthusiastic about new art that he sponsored an international prize at the venerable Venice Biennale — the only American to do so.
Bright’s own collection featured School of Paris titans....There were New York School masters too...
...the name of German sculptor Norbert Kricke does not stand out. Kricke, born in Duesseldorf and trained in Berlin, was 44 when his sculpture was chosen to grace the LACMA plaza. (He died in 1984.)...Industrialist Norton Simon even made the work’s removal a condition of the possible donation of his spectacular art collection, which didn’t come to pass.
When “Space Sculpture” was dismantled to make way for LACMA’s Anderson Building expansion...the museum sent it on a 10-year loan to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Once the loan period was up, LACMA quietly decided to sell it, leaving a big, unfortunate hole in its collecting history....A spokesman said “the museum entertained several competitive offers,” finally selling the sculpture in Germany in 1988. LACMA declined to reveal the buyer or sale price, and whether it subsequently changed hands is unknown. So is the work’s current whereabouts.
What did David E. Bright, the generous donor, think of all this? We’ll never know... Twelve days after the public first began streaming across the plaza and past “Space Sculpture” to check out L.A.’s aspiring new museum, Bright died from a cerebral hemorrhage... He was 57.
His wife...gave LACMA the cream of his Modern art collection in 1967. The gift ranked as the largest, most important bequest of art — of any kind — that the young museum had yet received. [End quote]
> that this came part and parcel
> with being an encyclopedic
> museum.
The square footage of a Louvre or Met is so huge, even if its full collection isn't on display, it's still a large amount. But the square footage of the Geffen isn't nearly as gargantuan. That's even more obvious if Govan and his curators - for creative reasons (or money-technical reasons too?) - intentionally reduce the amount of works they feel should be on display.
The hip-trendy look of a contemporary art museum doesn't necessarily fit what should be the format of an encyclopedic one.
Meanwhile, Govan is apparently interested in taking over MOCA and remains committed to a satellite location, which - at best - will work like the Watts Towers. Then there are loans of the permanent collection that LACMA is supposed to give to the new art museum in Vegas.
> elitist mind-set that keeps
> it from coming home.
The article from 2015 mentions that Norton Simon apparently didn't care for the work. Although he was a major part of the local arts community, for some reason his reaction to Krieke's sculpture didn't stand out to me.
Just as in 1965, I'm seeing a variety of negative comments directed at another new building for LACMA. The Geffen Galleries and Govan's idiosyncrasies are rubbing some observes the wrong way just as people like Norton Simon in the 1960s felt about Krieke's "Space Sculpture"---vis-a-vie William Pereira? I'm not sure if the shortcomings of one affected the other. But it's possible that had Pereira's work been better, the sculpture in the central front court perhaps would have been more well received too.
As a kid, I recall the moats and fountains made up for the nature of the museum's "tract house" design---which at the time I took at face value (ie, didn't notice).
In 2008, when Chris Burden's Urban Lights were installed in front of LACMA, I thought its non-kinetic nature (compared with water and fountains) wouldn't make it ideal or popular. Or become an Instagram or TikTok moment. So what do I know?
https://www.mercedes-benz.art/media/Kricke_Flaechenplastik-im-Raum-1.jpg
> an encyclopedic museum.
Sometimes sheer volume helps offset a lack of depth. I don't know the exact quality of various items that LACMA keeps in storage, but photos of some of its displays in the new building give the impression of "is that all there is?" Or a sense they have more space than they know what to do with.
That was a reaction I sometimes had in the former buildings. I recall walls where it seemed like too much space was left between objects hanging on them or what was sitting on the floor of a gallery.
Contemporary art museums like MOCA are notorious for admiring the look of "is that all there is?" Which is made worse because MOCA to begin with doesn't have a lot of square footage.
And, if you are up to it, let me know what you think of my favorite high res b&w of the Kricke piece. It is best at https://sterlingimages.us/original_entrance_sculpture_LACountyArtMuseum1964_Norbert_Kricke_Space_Sculpture.htm It also can be purchased in different sizes as a print, or even better, delivered as a digital file for limited print orders. It looks good at 24 x 24 and up to 48 x 48.
I offered the negatives and my high res digital scans to LACMA, but they only wanted it as a gift to them, with no strings attached, like hanging a large print to commemorate the original visions of LACMA revealed in that sculpture. Geez . . .
One other sidebar -- My fisheye versions of Watts Towers circa 1972 are worth a look. Well, more than a look. One shot gives a view of the Towers that is exactly what Alison Saar stated (In Unframed, paraphrased here) "was a huge influence on her visions after playing at the Towers as a kid." Those images are at my sterlingimages.us site
OMG 1972 . . . Watts Summer Festival, Wattstax! What a year! Take care, Ron
MoMA acquired the work in 1961, around the same time that it staged a small presentation of his work in the Penthouse of the original building. Shows there featured artists who were little-known and/or emerging.
It's telling that MoMA never acquired another work following that exhibition. It's a sign that the artist never gained any significance of note, even among MoMA's Board of Trustees. If he had, one of them would have tried to advance Kricke's reputation/value by donating a work to MoMA.
... Now, let's confirm Kricke's status by checking with the Glenstone Museum. It catches things that MoMA misses, especially given the greater emphasis Glenstone places on sculpture. No works by Kricke in their collection.
... Sorry to inform some of you, but it's NOT the "LA elitist mind-set." It's lack of importance.
--- J. Garcin
> gets to take place.
Other than regulars Ted G and J Garcin, this blog deserves way more commenters. I notice Facebook and Instagram posts about the Geffen building (which got a formal media write-up yesterday in the LA Times and NY Times) received dozens of replies. Of course, the NY Times site received the most: Over 200 reader posts. The LA Times just 49.'
I'd say the majority of comments have been generally sour to unimpressed. Peter Zumthor, Michael Govan and probably the historic immaturity of LACMA (only 60 years old) don't strike a chord in various people. The quality of photos in the NY Times (the photographer was trying to be too artsy?) also got a lot of negative critiques.
These comments in the NY Times stood out the most to me:
Joe Barron, NYC:
Generally anything that sparks this much outrage is likely heading to a smash hit with constituents who do not read "the Times" every day. I hate almost everything about it which to my view is a good sign that I wlll end up loving it. Congratulations LA!!!
John Ryskamp, Berkeley:
Still, LACMA should have a much better collection, since there has always been so much money in LA. Basically, Californians don't care about art. They want experiences, not objects. One person explained to me, "When we want to look at something nice, we look out the window."
Kit, Los Angeles:
@John Ryskamp...nope....not true...as a transplanted San Francisco Bay Area resident I have to disagree...since coming back to LA these last 13 years I have been astonished by the art scene here...it makes San Fran seem so provincial.... [End quote]
Your photo of the Kricke sculpture at night installed on top of the central fountain (in the middle of 2 moats and spigot fountains to the west and east) caught one of the classically 1960's aspect of LACMA. That's when a post-modern style (which got its fair share of down votes) was used for 2 major cultural developments in LA (Welton Becket's theater in downtown LA and Pereira's building on Wilshire) and the one in NYC, the performing arts complex near the southwestern portion of Central Park.
David Geffen's name is on one of those buildings in NYC from the 1960s he gave a lot of money to and the reviews for it were also generally tepid.
ATLANTIC
Francis Bacon, “Three Studies of Lucian Freud”
Kuba peoples, Shoowa group, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ceremonial Textile Panel
Julio Le Parc, “Mural: Virtual Circles”
Ansel Adams, “Surf Sequence”
Walter Dorwin Teague, “‘Nocturne’ Radio, Model #1186”
Betye Saar, “I’ll Bend But I Will Not Break”
Vincent Van Gogh, “Tarascon Stagecoach”
MEDITERRANEAN
Damascus Room
Georges de La Tour, “The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame”
Clara Peeters, “Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke, and Cherries”
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, “Interior of the Mariakerk, Utrecht”
INDIAN
Map Shawl, Kashmir region, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Do Ho Suh, “Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace”
PACIFIC
June Wayne, “White Tidal Wave II”
Ruth Asawa, Untitled
Diego Rivera, “Flower Day (Día de flores)”
Kimsooja, “A Needle Woman”
I don't know how they figure that Ansel Adams's photos of the Pacific Coast counts as "Atlantic," or Do Ho Suh's recreation of a Seoul palace is Indian. Nor why van Gogh's south-of-France view is coded Atlantic, while La Tour's north-of-France Magdalene is Mediterranean.
> the 17 works
They remind me of LACMA's current landing page. It looks like that of a regional art museum, a second-tier outfit that runs on a modest budget. Contemporary art generally costs much less to organize and exhibit.
Meanwhile, the Met is hosting a show titled, "Raphael: Sublime Poetry."
LA Times, April 8:
Our critic picks 17 unmissable works of art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries. The list is eclectic and unexpected, composed of some of the museum’s greatest hits as well as quieter pieces susceptible to being overlooked.
Gone is the traditional museum format of organizing art in sequential, neatly contained rooms according to nationality, time period and medium. Works in the collection are grouped according to four major bodies of water—the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.
1969; oil on canvas: Irish-born British painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) …Freud, a prominent painter himself, shared Bacon's idea of the human as an endlessly fascinating package of flesh and dark secrets.
Late 19th to early 20th century, raffia-palm fiber plain weave with raffia cut pile and embroidery: This is one of six Kuba panels on display together… Kuba cloth was avidly collected by European ethnographers and missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
1964–66, wood, aluminum, stainless steel and polished metal: Julio Le Parc…who was born in Argentina in 1928 and now lives in France, co-founded a group that used the introduction of motion and time to upend the traditional relationship between art and viewer.
1940, printed after 1972, gelatin silver prints: Ansel Adams (1902–1984) trained to be a concert pianist before turning fully to photography, but retained a musical sensibility in his visual work. This progression of five ocean views shot from atop a cliff along the Northern California coast over a 20-minute period exudes a love of rhythm, pattern and variation.
1934, tools and equipment, powered devices, colored mirrored glass and chrome-plated and lacquered metal: If an early 19th-century luxury ocean liner parked itself in your living room, it might look something like this. Advertised by its manufacturer, Sparton, as "A Vision in Midnight Blue Crystal Mirror Glass and Satin Chrome," the Nocturne epitomized Art Deco elegance.
1998, mixed media including vintage ironing board, flat iron, chain, white bedsheet, wood clothespins and rope: Betty Saar…visualizes a bitter irony: "The woman who irons the sheet that the [Ku Klux Klan] person wears," the artist has explained, "is a Black woman and is a slave."
1888, oil on canvas: Van Gogh (1853–1890) moved to Arles in the south of France in 1888, drawn to the landscape, the light and the rustic lifestyle. Rustic is the operative word in describing the stagecoach portrayed here.
Circa 1635–37, oil on canvas: Georges de la Tour. This is a portrait of a soul examining itself, which makes it instantly relatable in spite of the symbolic elements not typical of our time and world: the skull resting on Mary's lap (a reminder of mortality); the penitential whip on the table awaiting its violent use.
Circa 1625, oil on wood panel: Few schools of painting are as sensorily gratifying as 17th-century Dutch still life. Clara Peeters (c.1588/90–1636) was an early adopter of the form, and the rare female artist still recognized four centuries later.
1651, oil on wood panel: Pieter Saenredam (1597–1665) made meticulous drawings and perspectival studies of the 11th-century Romanesque structure, then distilled the interior further to a state of quiet purity, a light-suffused, sacred shell.
Second half of 19th century, goat hair, embroidered: Queen Victoria was gifted one of these rare, labor-intensive embroideries… Somewhere between a diagram of the city of Srinagar and a diary of its everyday life, this shawl is a thorough delight to explore.
2026, polyester fabric on stainless steel and aluminum frame with ceramic coating: It's not a human spirit, but the specter of a building, part of the Joseon Dynasty’s royal palace in Seoul. Do Ho Suh was born in Seoul in 1962, but has lived in numerous cities around the world.
1972, lithograph, June Wayne (1918–2011): The tidal wave in this print (which hangs among five more of Wayne's odes to monumental tidal energy) starts out as the blank white of the paper, almost an absence, before heaving upward to its frothy height at the very top edge of the sheet.
1954, iron, copper and brass wire: It took the art world…until relatively recently to fully incorporate Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) into the dominant history of postwar American art. This untitled hanging piece epitomizes the ingenuity and distilled beauty of Asawa’s best work.
1925, oil on canvas: Diego Rivera (1886–1957) returned post-Revolution to his native Mexico in 1921, and experienced an internal revolution of his own. "Flower Day" embodies Rivera's newfound appreciation for the Indigenous population, as well as the rhythms of everyday life.
2005, Six-channel video installation: Kimsooja, born in 1957 in Taegu, Korea, filmed these performative scenes in major cities around the world over the course of 10 years, exhibiting them in different iterations and scales. [End quote]
^ A lot of that to me isn't must-see.
I used to wonder why LACMA's annual attendance figures were so modest. But given its compromised physical setting going back to 1965 and its newbie's-beginner's collection, I realize it's lucky to have drawn as many visitors as it has.
> they figure
Didn't mean to upend your post, but the question you ask is another reason why I have a shaky opinion of Robert Govan, Peter Zumthor and LACMA's overall history.
Even though I've heard and read non-Met/non-Louvre-type (ie, negative) comments aimed at LACMA for quite awhile, until the past few years I didn't totally understand just how compromised it really was/is.
There is also this. By putting it in the Atlantic section, you force people to think Why is it here? What makes Van Gogh a transatlantic artist? Was he the creation of American collectors? Which collectors and where in America? The midwest. The Detroit Institute of the Arts was the first US museum to acquire one of his paintings. What did they find attractive about his paintings? Van Gogh's "regional" sensibility (i.e., rural subject matter). They saw themselves and "America" in his paintings.
The stagecoach is not an American invention, but the American popular culture made it so. When Americans see a stagecoach, they are not transported to Europe, but feel right at home.
This is not exactly what Van Gogh saw in the stagecoach. For him it represented a different kind of spiritual journey. But what LACMA (I think) is saying here is that the journey of the painting itself expands upon Van Gogh's notion of journey. It's a notion that is embedded in the composition itself. It's a rather dynamic way of posing the question what makes a Van Gogh painting a Van Gogh painting.
--- J. Garcin
Adams: the perception that he was "modernizing" pictures of nature and the role that MoMA played in promoting his work. MoMA placed his work in the context of European modernism.
Do Ho Su: fabric is a traditional material of both Indian and Korean art. There are also other "crossings" between the two cultures that date as far back as the 4th Century with the introduction of Buddhism. Now google Buddhism and Do Ho Soh for more insight on the connection.
--- J. Garcin
Waiting for your art review of the installation / art on display at the new DVG. 🙏🏼
> to art history and cement the
> director Michael Govan's legacy
Not sure if that "unconventional" ends up being another version of Pereira's LACMA. Or an outcome that's way more surprisingly half-baked than I originally assumed it was.
Even the major art museum of Houston has an overall look that isn't much of a slouch compared with (or not too different from) other Beaux-Arts-era enfilade-type spaces. Which makes the nature of LACMA 1965-1986 even more embarrassing.
So LACMA (and LA overall) during much of the 20th century in one major cultural way wasn't outdone just by the top-league urban areas of the US and world, it was outdone by even 1920's-era Houston, Texas----LA's public art museum for over 40 years from then would remain lodged in with dinosaur bones in Exposition Park.
https://youtu.be/1xiD2SBHhvk?si=yHPDOdWUH-oxSInu
Wikipedia:
By gallery space, [the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston] is the second-largest art museum in the Americas....the original neo-classical building was designed in phases by architect William Ward Watkin. The original Caroline Wiess Law building was constructed in 1924 and the east and west wing were added in 1926. [End quote]
I don't know if the gray-concrete-parking-garage-windows format of the Geffen building is necessarily avoidable when LACMA for over 60 years has already allowed its brand image to be quite "oops!"